Smith, Tracy K. 1973(?)–

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1973. Education: Harvard College, B.A.; Columbia University, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brooklyn, NY. Office—Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, Medgar Evers College, City University of New York, 1150 Carroll St., New York, NY 11225-2201. E-mail—tsmith@mec.cuny.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, poet, and educator. Teacher at Medgar Evers College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Gotham Writer's Workshop; visiting assistant professor of English at University of Pittsburgh, 2005.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Wallace E. Stegner fellow in poetry, Stanford University, 1997-99; Cave Canem Poetry Prize, 2002, for The Body's Question; Rona Jaffee Foundation Writers' Award, 2004; Laughlin Award, for Duende.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

The Body's Question, selected and introduced by Kevin Young, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 2003.

Duende: Poems, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 2007.

Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Boulevard, Callaloo, and PN Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tracy K. Smith's collection of poems titled The Body's Question is a "spare, honest and insightful debut verse collection," commented Douglas Danoff in Essence. The poems explore some melancholy topics related to race, love, family, and loss, but in the end they are held together by "a sense of joy of prayer," Louis McKee in the Library Journal observed. The works look at city life, the paradoxical notion that there is greater satisfaction in hunger than in fullness, and the philosophical failure of language to relay abstract concepts of love and loss. The collection "interrogates the nature of physical and the metaphysical knowledge" of philosophy, remarked Gregory Pardlo in Black Issues Book Review. Like the episodes of life they illuminate, Smith's poems steer away from resolution; they "resist closure," Pardlo noted. Even so, the poems find their own level of balance, and it is a balancing act that Smith performs with "lyric aplomb," Pardlo stated. McKee called The Body's Question a "rich collection of stories, histories, and moments that glow with the clean, direct language of a charming new voice."

Smith published another collection in 2007, titled Duende: Poems. The title is a word used often in southern Spain, which has many meanings attached to it, some of them contradictory. It has been defined variously as a ghost, a demon, inspiration, magic, and magnetism. The famous Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca described it as the source of any artistic action. In Smith's collection duende is represented as "the unforgiving place where the soul confronts emotion, acknowledges death and finds poetry," according to a Publishers Weekly review. She opens the collection with a quote from Lorca, and then presents her own representation of the duende concept. There are thirty poems in the collection, addressing topics ranging from the personal to the political. The poet adopts various personas, including many who suffer from a sense of displacement—for example, writing from the perspective of a Ugandan girl who is sold into a marriage. The Publishers Weekly reviewer found Smith's writing displays "lyric brilliance," and praised not only her writing but her ability to take on weighty subjects. A reviewer for the Associated Content Web site commented that one of the most noteworthy aspects of the book is "a bold admittance to a fact all poets know: poetry is distorted truth."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, March-April, 2004, Gregory Pardlo, review of The Body's Question, p. 25.

Essence, March, 2005, Douglas Danoff, profile of Tracy K. Smith, p. 136.

Library Journal, September 15, 2003, Louis McKee, review of The Body's Question, p. 62.

Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2007, review of Duende: Poems, p. 35.

ONLINE

Associated Content,http://www.associatedcontent.com/ (June 27, 2008), review of Duende.

Cave Canem Poetry Prize Web site,http://www.cavecanempoets.org/ (July 8, 2008), biography of Tracy K. Smith.

Medgar Evers College of City University of New York Web site,http://www.mec.cuny.edu/ (July 8, 2008).